India to introduce digital health ID cards

A health worker checks body temperature of a traveler as a precaution against COVID-19 before allowing her to proceed at a train station in Mumbai Thursday. (AP)

• Push to digitize health data of country’s 1.3 billion people launched

NEW DELHI: India is set to digitalize its universal multi-payer healthcare system to create “equitable access to health services,” the government said on Thursday.
In 2018, India’s National Health Authority launched a national health insurance program called Ayushman Bharat to provide healthcare to around 500 million low-income earners in the country. The government’s new initiative — the Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission — is an extension of the insurance scheme that will see every citizen issued with a health ID card containing their medical data, which will be stored in a central database.
The scheme was launched earlier this week by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who hailed it as a “revolutionary change in India’s healthcare facilities.”
Speaking to the media on Thursday, National Health Authority chief Dr. R.S. Sharma said: “We are creating a network of service delivery through the Ayushman Bharat Digital Mission, which will create affordable, equitable, quality health services for the people.”
India spends around 1 percent of its GDP on health — among the lowest percentage of any major economy. The second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, which killed 450,000 Indians between March and May, served to highlight the country’s long-standing problems with its healthcare system and lack of access to it.
“We have passed through a very difficult time, and people have realized how important health services are,” Dr. Sharma said, adding that with 1.18 billion registered mobile phone numbers — 800 million of which are used online — the country’s digital infrastructure is strong enough to support the digitalization project.
Each health ID card will contain its holder’s medical history, including diagnoses and doctor observations, which can be shared with any hospital in the country. So far, 100,000 cards have been distributed in a pilot project in six Indian states.
The scheme has been met with skepticism in some quarters.
“It will not serve the (important) purpose of providing health services to the masses,” Mumbai-based public health expert Dr. T. Sundararaman told Arab News. “It will have a limited role to play.”